An agency cannot run ChatGPT ads out of its own account on your behalf. OpenAI's ad platform has no manager account and no shared billing, so the advertiser account has to belong to your business and be verified against your own registration details. Your agency is then invited into that account with a role, and works inside it.
We put this question to OpenAI Ads Support in writing, because the public documentation says nothing either way. Everything below follows from that one structural fact.
This question used to be asked for a different reason. Until 31 August 2026, when beta self-serve access opened across the 31 European markets, a European business had no way into the platform except OpenAI's Ads Solutions team, an agency partner or a technology partner, so "can an agency run this for us" really meant "can we get in at all". That is no longer the question anywhere in Europe. The reason to bring in an agency now is execution, and this guide is about what that actually looks like inside an account you own.
There is no manager account
If you have run paid media before, you expect a layer above the ad account: Google's manager account, Meta's Business Manager, some structure that holds many client accounts and can carry billing centrally. ChatGPT Ads has no equivalent today. OpenAI confirmed to us in August 2026 that there is no manager-account or shared-billing structure it recommends for agencies.
So the unit of everything is a single advertiser account belonging to one business: verification, billing, policy liability and campaign data all attach there.
How agency access actually works
The sequence is short, and it only runs in one direction:
- +Your business opens its own advertiser account, in the country where your legal entity is registered.
- +The account is verified against your registered name, registration number and address, with a payment card that matches the entity and its country.
- +You invite your agency into the verified account with the appropriate role, and they build, launch and optimise inside it.
The upside is that the account stays yours. Campaign history, conversion data and audiences live in an account you own, so changing agency is an access change and the history survives it. The cost is that you carry the verification and the billing yourself, and that step has to finish before anything launches. What the check actually involves is in our business verification guide.
The agency route is not an eligibility workaround
This is the question we still get from businesses in the countries that cannot advertise yet: can we just run it through you? The answer is no, and it follows directly from the structure above. The account carries your legal entity, so an agency registered in an eligible country has no eligibility to lend you. Fifty-two countries are now on the advertiser list, so this affects far fewer businesses than it did a month ago, and it affects them absolutely. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are the two absences we get asked about most, and both are still outside.
What does work is an entity you already own. If your group has a company in any of the 52, that company can open and verify an account today and invite us into it. Failing that, the availability page carries a waitlist and we write the day a market opens. The full country rules are in our eligibility guide.
One login, several accounts
One entity per account is the rule, and it stops there. The same login can hold several advertiser accounts side by side, say a UK company and a US one, as long as each carries its own accurate business details and neither exists to get around a verification or a policy the other failed. We checked that one with OpenAI, since the docs never address it.
That matters for groups with entities in more than one eligible market, and for agencies holding their own account alongside the client accounts they are invited into. Each account's country and currency are locked at setup, so a second market means opening a second account.
What to agree before you hand over access
Because the account is yours, a few things are worth settling in writing at the start: who holds the card and therefore the billing relationship with OpenAI, who owns the creative and the context hints built inside the account, and what happens to access when the engagement ends. All of it is easier to agree before the account is live.
When you would rather someone did the setup alongside you, that is what we do end to end: account, verification, campaign structure and launch within 48 hours of kickoff.
